It's not uncommon for architecture libraries to have special collections of rare books, and we do have a collection of architectural rare books. But we also have a very specialized collection of world's fair materials - and it is in two parts. One part is a collection of primary material - mostly graphics, photographs, postcards, posters, trade cards, such things as that, as well as some pamphlets and materials like that and then we also have a book collection, which is mostly reports put out by the fairs, as well as some scholarship.

And the strength of the collection is that, we have a very strong research collection as far as the books are concerned, and what makes the graphics and ephemeral collection specialized is that while we don't have a lot for any one particular fair, we have something that's representative of the major international world's fairs.

Philadelphia Exposition of 1876 Main Transcept and French Section - Main Building

The big thing that's coming up now is the publishing of the digital collection, which is called A Treasury of World's Fair Art & Architecture - as well as an exhibit that the librarian, Louise Greene of the Art Library and myself are proposing, and we're hoping that that will become a traveling show (nationally).

One of the strengths of our collection are the U.S. fairs. And as the U.S. fairs go, the 1876 Centennial Exposition was, of course, one of the largest fairs, and we have a very large part of that collection. And since Philadelphia is relatively close and Pennsylvania and Maryland have a long history with one another, we do focus on that, and we also have a large collection of the 1904 fair.

Now we do have a web site... that showed the overall breadth of our collection. And starting in 2001, we began a process of digitizing our collection comprehensively... and it focuses on the 1876 fair and the 1904 fair.

We are providing... "metadata" - basically cataloging data - so that people can come in and they can access more and more parts of our collection.

The Centennial Record covered the Philadelphia Exposition from January through December, 1876.

Q - I understand you're helping Shanghai

The next major world's fair - exposition - will be in Shanghai in the year 2010. Beginning in about 2002, the Shanghai International Library was set up as the official research venue for the official committee that was organizing the fair. And I was contacted, as curator of this collection to attend and give a presentation about how we use our collection here because we were the "number one site" that they reflected. Our website is considered to be one of the official websites for the world's fair.

Currently one of the architectural historians, Dr. Isabelle Gourney teaches a class within the Honors program on international expositions. It is a combination of architectural history as well as cultural history and the relationship between cultural social history and architectural history. She has taught the class three times and each time I have helped her to co-teach the class. It is based upon the items in the collection - the research collection as well as the primary source material. And one of the aspects of the class is teaching the students how to deal with special collection material and how to interpret primary source material.

One of the innovative things that we've done is to provide a publishing venue. The best essays, that are a final assignment for the class, are vetted between Dr. Gournay and myself - they're edited, and then they are accepted and then we post them onto the website and then subsequently the classes then use those essays as a textbook. And we are now in the process of making our editorial selections for the class which ended just a month ago in 2006.

Q -Where do you see this library going in the future?

We have a certain amount, a very small income stream, that comes from selling the rights to publishers, etc. - people who want to publish images. And we turn that back into a program - we're building a digital library, a digital research collection.

And one of the things we're doing is linking the reference questions to a national reference service called "Ask Us Now" that will allow me to share my answers about my collection with other research librarians throughout the United States and hopefully that too will help to raise the status of our library.

Hear the complete interview with Architecture Library Curator Patti Cossard
Podcast download: http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/audio/2006/wfair/Cossard.mp4

Learn More about the Architecture Library at the University of Maryland
A Treasury of World's Fair Art & Architecture
Original World's Fair Online Exhibit
Learn More about all the Digital Collections at Maryland
Slideshow of the World's Fair Special Collection

	Slideshow and Description of the Maryland Building at the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition. Feature on the Register Books Used in the Maryland Building During the Exposition. Read a Description from the 1904 Reveille Yearbook About the Maryland Agricultural College Cadet's Visit to the St. Louis Exposition (PDF file).